This thesis seeks to illuminate the nature of the British national interest in Southeast Asia (SEA), as defined and pursued by the Attlee government, 1945-1951. The analysis is undertaken by examining the relationship between government and business in the region, identifying areas of consensus and conflict. It is established that the British government intended to do its utmost to aid British firms in SEA to re-establish their businesses after the disruption to production and trade caused by the war, as a means of protecting its own subjects and assets, and also of furthering British political and commercial interests in the region. However, this was at a time when the need to divert resources to reconstruct and support the domestic British economy made the task of assisting business overseas problematic, to the extent that government's ability to provide material support was limited. Whilst such logistical difficulties were real, it can also be said that differences over the level of assistance to business were heightened by ideological division between businessmen, on the one hand, and government officials, on the other. These themes are explored through an analysis of the interactions of British enterprises which had business interests in Siam (Thailand), Indonesia and Malaya, with the British government and the local British authorities in these countries. This examination takes place against the background of a readjustment in Britain's relations with these countries in the aftermath of the war. Given the urgency of reconstruction at home, the Attlee government was lessening Britain's overseas commitments. In SEA the British government firmly believed economic and social betterment to be pivotal to the task of quickly establishing stability and also, later on, in protecting the region from Communist expansionism. Therefore US cooperation was sought as a source of necessary resources, but at the same time the British were bound to protect British based business interests against US competition, not least because of their valuable impact on the value of Sterling. The Attlee administrations' endeavour to obtain US cooperation however often proved to be ineffective because of the US government's reluctance to be involved in this particular part of Asia. In practice, government assistance to and protection of business were not always possible in the aftermath of the war and firms needed to transform themselves to adapt to new times. Despite this, the two worked closely together and the British government often showed a great willingness to provide moral and practical support for British enterprises. In retrospect, this cooperation only worked where the demands of business did not conflict with the interests and policy of government, and under such circumstances, business was seldom satisfied. Those firms that did survive achieved this primarily by implementing their own strategies and some accomplished a great deal throughout the 1950s and beyond.

This is a study about the trade union movement in colonial and early post-colonial Malaysia. This is done by examining the role and development of the country's national labour centre, the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC), and in particular, its leadership from 1949 to 1981. The central argument of the study is that the MTUC was a reformist organisation because of state control and the dominance of "moderate" and "responsible" leadership. It is also argued that the national centre was unable to effectively represent the interests of labour because the leadership lacked a working-class ideological perspective. These arguments are developed with reference to a number of ma j or themes or issues during the period under review Such as "responsible unionism", government incorporation of the movement, politics, tripartism and industrial peace, "worker capitalism", conflicts within the movement, and communalism. An essential part of the exercise has been to reinterpret the history of the national centre during its first three decades of existence. After the first two introductory chapters, Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the formation and early development of the MTUC during the colonial era. The role of government and "moderate" labour leaders is highlighted. Chapters 5 and 6 consider the position and role of the MTUC with respect to labour disputes and politics under the post-colonial Alliance government. The following two chapters analyse the compromising ideology and divisions and split within the movement under the Barisan Nasional government. The study is an appraisal of the Malaysian trade union movement attempting to contribute to an understanding of trade unionism in an ex-colonial "Third World" setting.

Since the 1980s, areas of public rental housing in South Korea have emerged as one of the targets of housing policy. The Korean government has developed public rental housing policy with the goal of contributing to social integration through providing the poor with decent and affordable accommodations. However, since the 2000s, there has been a growing concern that public rental housing estates have become stigmatised and isolated from the outside at a local level. The phenomenon of 'conflict' between public rental housing estates and local people not living on public rental housing estates has been debated under the term 'social exclusion' not only by Korean academia but also the government. This research maintains that a specific type of public rental housing estate is labelled as the neighbourhood for the undeserving poor by non-residents of the estates, who refuse to socialise with the estate residents. Drawing on available models to explain the social downgrading of neighbourhoods, this study concludes that social exclusion on public rental housing estates in South Korea is caused by a combination of the 'concentration effect' on the estates and the Korean welfare state oriented towards the principle of selectivity through 'targeting' in social provisioning.

The documentary evidence used in this dissertation has been drawn from the Ottoman court records and it is complemented by the data derıved from the fiscal registers. This dissertation adopted a case-study approach to allow a deeper insight into the complexities of the rural history of Ottoman Anatolia in the first half of the seventeenth century. These complexities are more related to the methodological approaches which are based on the adaptation of the purported theories about ‘the general crisis of the seventeenth century’ to Ottoman history. Such misinterpretations put the contention that a set of social, economic and ecological challenges associated with the Little Ice Age put a lot of serious strains on the Ottoman state and society during the seventeenth century. By adopting a critical approach to the arguments of such crisis-based theories that revolve around the Celali rebellions and the phenomenon of the Little Ice Age, this dissertation aims to show through the cases of Aintab, Urfa and Ankara that the countryside of Anatolia was more resilient to the so-called challenges than it seems. This dissertation examines the economic, demographic and ecological dynamics in rural Anatolia in the period following the Celali rebellions from a regional perspective that takes into consideration the local geographic and climatic characteristics. It focuses on a wide range of topics that include types of farming, rural settlement patterns, change in rural settlements, and agrarian and pastoral trends in the land use forms. It explores the pastoral and agricultural activities of the nomadic people with the aim of highlighting their constructive in the rural economies of Anatolia.

Global value chain (GVC) analysis serves an important role in the global economy and development. Whereas research on governance is well documented in GVC research, only recently has the institutional context emerged as a new dimension of GVC analysis. This thesis integrates critical frameworks of governance, including the five types of governance of Gereffi et al. (2005) and institutional theory with the four mechanism of Beckert (2010), to develop further analysis of GVCs. These frameworks are fundamental for exploring the nature of problematic issues, such as tensions, in re-shaping GVC structures. The research employs method triangulation in both data collection (semi-structured interviews, observations and documents) and analysis (thematic analysis, discursive devices and institutional logics) to achieve the research objective of solving the institutional governance tensions within GVCs in the research setting of the Vietnam Textile and Garment Industry. The findings show that tensions stem mainly from two resources, symmetrical power and new circumstances. Although tension is often neglected or considered a negative factor in management, it can motivate creative responses and effectively serve as a motional factor. In any form, the influence of tension on GVC structures occurs in both convergent and divergent trends but creates a new balance of power between actors in the chain.

The central aim of this thesis is to examine the extent to which the growing pressures for equal opportunity between the sexes has forced Japanese companies to adapt and modify their employment and personnel management practices in recent years. It analyses the major social and economic factors prompting Japanese companies to adopt more open employment policies towards women since the mid-1970s and the change programmes introduced by management. The thesis especially looks at how companies have reacted to the 1985 Equal Employment Opportunity Law and in the light of this considers how far the present legislation will bring about fundamental changes in the Japanese employment system towards more egalitarian treatment of women workers. A detailed case study was conducted at Seibu Department Stores Ltd., both before and after the introduction of the EEO Law, as a critical test of the possibility of introducing equal opportunities for women in a large Japanese company. Seibu was chosen because it is a big employer of women and is a company operating in an industry which has strong economic and- commercial incentives to offer women better career opportunities. All the more important, Seibu is regarded as a 'leading edge' company in personnel management reforms. The study reveals that despite many economic and social reasons that were in favour of change towards greater sexual equality in Seibu, and especially after the introduction of the EEO Law, change towards more egalitarian treatment of women has been very limited. This study illustrates the depth of the resistance to change in the core employment practices in large Japanese companies. The present EEO Law has little potential for undermining the structural mechanisms which perpetúate sexual job segregation in the employment system. The final part of the thesis speculates on the future prospects of introducing equal opportunities for women in Japanese companies. In the light of the present socio-legal constraints, the author puts forward a number of practical policy suggestions for engendering more pervasive long-term changes towards equal employment for Japanese women.